


Walk Straight Down The Middle (Fire Walk With Me)

by Heyiya



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Awkward First Times, Dorks in Love, F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, War Trauma, element of fire
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-25 21:29:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12541628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heyiya/pseuds/Heyiya
Summary: 'Can't move my arms, Can't move my legs. Can't say no, I can't say yes. Can't help myself. I need your help.'Also, firespinning.





	Walk Straight Down The Middle (Fire Walk With Me)

 

It was dead. The envious moon was dead.

The life's work of Galen Erso was complete. 

Or destroyed.  
Or completely destroyed.

Jyn had not been drunk in a while. It felt good, horrifyingly good. The result of this diametrically opposed pull was a spinning and tumbling through the crowd, dark and smoky and full of the scent of other people's sweat and perfume. 

When she reached the bar, she climbed on top, gingerly, legs wobbling underneath. When she lit the poi, the flame dripped from one of them, extinguishing as it fell.   
The faces looking up at her disappeared behind the light. She was alone in the glare. She closed her eyes and breathed in, deeply, feeling the warmth of her face.  
Then she started spinning.

As she slowly gained momentum, she knew she was really too rusty, and certainly way too intoxicated for this. She was also dimly aware of being watched. The sound of shattering glass and a wookiee's rueful exclamation below to her right.

She didn't care about either.   
She closed her eyes and spun.

 

***

 

Apparently she had made the poi herself, out of the remains of an old combat vest.   
Then she had dipped the kevlar in kerosene. Because of course she would.  
It looked insane. Incredibly beautiful, but nonetheless insane. A roar of appreciation went up from the crowd, even as those closest by scrambled to get out of the way. Most were every bit as smashed as the performer.

"I had no idea she could do that," Bodhi remarked, and Cassian thought, neither had I.

 Neither had I.

 Her face glowed. Clear and strong.

"In case you want to know, the probability of her getting horribly burned sooner or later..."

"K?"

"...Yes?"

"Shut up."

  The fires played in her eyes, the warm orange light making her face a landscape of light and shadow. The fire was like snakes that she was taming. Flying through the air, they changed direction, going from circles to figures of eight to eternity, now slow and hypnotic, now a whirling glow so fast that it became burning circles. She was at the center, oblivious, alone inside the blazing world. It looked amazing. 

They watched in rapt attention, until her clothes caught fire.  
Cassian cursed and dived in the crowd, Baze Malbus right behind him. Luckily, the wookiee bartender had also lost his patience. He howled in exasperation and started unceremoniously beating her with a kitchen towel. It did the trick. Both for the smoldering trousers and the poi. They made their way up to the side of the bar and Baze wrestled them, still smoking, from her.   
To say that the whill was frowning would be an understatement, Cassian thought. If looks could kill, Jyn would have laid sprawled on the ground, there and then.

She grinned sheepishly in stead, and half fell, half jumped off the bar and onto him, landing against his shoulder, nose first:   
".... hi."  
Craning his neck downwards he managed to look back at her. Her focus was slightly swimming, but her eyes were very open, very close.   
She smelled of sweat and kerosene. And... yeah, alcohol.   
"That was rather talented, Erso."

"...you think so?!" she giggled. 

"Talented and incredibly stupid."  
He'd never heard her giggle.  It was okay by him, he liked the sound.

"Learned it while I was with Guerrera," she said. "Made the time pass during all the waiting between operations. Went busking with it after he...." her face started falling. 

He wasn't letting that happen. "You lost me credits with this, you know. K2 bet me you'd catch fire."

 "Of course he did," she said, and he smiled at the acidic tone. The distraction had worked.  
"I'm thirsty. Where'se bar?" she slurred.

Cassian caught Baze's eye. The latter shrugged and rolled his eyes before turning back, extinguished poi safely in hand, and heading towards the far corner near the exit, where the rest of Rogue One's crew were camped. 

The two of them remained while Jyn leaned over and ordered a final drink, arm wedged around his shoulder all the while. He had to balance for two, no small feat given that he was not entirely sober himself.  
 When she was finally done arguing with the service and had secured another pouring, against the express promise of no more impromptu stage acts, he swung her around and started gingerly towing her away the same way Baze had gone. To the intense relief of a stressed bartender, with a somewhat singed pelt.

 The stink of burnt hair.  
 As they hobbled along, noise and smoke all around, arms around shoulders, the memory of Scarif suddenly hovered, in his ears and lungs, like a ghost. He started shaking.

"Cassian...."

The sound of his name came from far away. It was all noise. Entirely too much noise.  
" _Cassian_!"

He started. Part of him wanted to dive for cover. He grabbed that part by the throat and held it. Kept moving.

She was leaning in front of him, looking straight at him now, eyes clear, the haziness chased out of her face by will. 

He recognized that will. 

 

***

 

He appeared treacherously composed, but she could feel him tensing against her side. The comfortable drowsy stupor into which she'd leaned, evaporated. His face was very focused. The mirth drained out of it.  

The ghost was there, and then gone. She scanned for the closest table, put her drink on it, turned back on him. When she called him he started, and looked at her. The mirth didn't return, but he looked at her, and his features softened. He was here. Reaching out, she cradled his neck and the side of his face, and he mirrored the movement, his hand warm against her cheek. She didn't know what else to do, so she moved on in and pressed her brow against his, willing him to feel better. There they stood, two small, grey figures, turned inward on a common center, united against the din.

He was so close she could feel his breath on her face. His chest rose and fell like crashing waves. 

 Get a kriffing load of yourself, Erso. He is out of it. You know exactly how that feels.

She felt like the pilot of a tiny ship, skirting the event horizon of a black hole. She stayed the course, her velocity perpendicular, struggling against gravity.

She spotted K2SO approaching, out of the corner of her eye. She wanted to pull away in anticipation, but Cassian wouldn't let go.

"It's fine," she said. "It's.... I just drank a bit too much, K."  

 She gently disentangled. It almost physically hurt. Cassian remained where he was, focused on her, mute, implacable.

She searched desperately for a place to rest her gaze. 

"What did you do to him?" K demanded.

Her eyes widened.

"I'm  _fine_ , K," Cassian snapped, though he still looked light-years away. 

"And I'm a mouse droid," K responded dryly. 

Jyn swallowed the ire. The taste was familiar, a relief. She almost felt grateful to the droid. 

"He's fine. Anyway. I'd better...." she muttered.

"Jyn." Cassian's voice was different. Fully present again, and tense. Like he had realized something.

That was exactly what she feared.

" _I'm drunk_ , okay? You won, K. I caught fire. I should go get checked, just in..."

" _Won?_  Won what? What did I win?"

"...case," she finished, and fled.

Mercifully, no one stopped her, though she heard K's puzzlement deepen:

"What did I win, Cassian?" 

She walked faster, not intending to stick around to hear the answer.

 

***

 

 

The battle of the Death Star had meant casualties.

Larger casualties always meant that lower down officers, or occasionally others, were given one of the bunks which were left vacant. Sentimentality was a luxury no one could afford.

When someone was off in the field for months, others poured in and filled the empty space. And if you didn't come home...

Cassian was a commissioned officer. But he hadn't been given a bunk this time around either. He'd not had one for a while. 

 

He hated designated quarters. They meant people knew where you were.    
And the newly empty bunks always looked like graves.   
The higher-ups knew of his attitude by now, and not to try giving him one.

Ships were different; they were movable.  He felt comfortable on ships. He was normally able to sleep without dreaming on ships.  
Normally. But he knew he wouldn't tonight. 

After Jyn had disappeared in the crowd, he'd been struck with the overwhelming desire to utterly disappear. To have silence. To be Nobody, Nowhere.

It was a shame how no one had ever explained these kinds of things to K.

"Cassian, that is not the ship."

"I know, K."

"It's...a blanket depot."

"Perceptive."

"Are you lost again?"

"No."

K loomed over him, considering for a while, then concluded with surprise:

"It  _wasn't_  Jyn's fault, was it?"

He sighed and looked up at the droid, holding its attention.  
 "No, K. Jyn didn't do anything. It wasn't her fault."

He gestured around, trying to encompass everything. 

"All this. None of it is anyone's  _fault_. In fact...." he stopped, drained.

K remained uncharacteristically quiet, for which he was grateful.

"....In fact, right then, she was a help. A really bloody great help." 

The droid, it seemed, had no answer for that. 

"I don't want to wake anyone." he finally finished, settling in. "Close the door when you leave."

K closed the door. If a droid can look sad, that's how one might have described its look.

  
***

 

Jyn managed to avoid most of everyone for most of the following day, subtracting that first hour spent negotiating with a recalcitrant Baze Malbus for the return of her poi. It wasn't that he completely refused to return them to her, but he appeared to hold several opinions, on amongst other things Fire, the use of; Drink, the imbibing of; and Care, the taking of. Unmoved by her incensed response, he held on to the contested objects until he'd taken his sweet time detailing all of these opinions, as if speaking to a child. It didn't seem to matter to him that she held rank, now. Baze Malbus was a whill. He didn't hold with ranks, he was as outside of them as Chirrut. And contrary to the latter, he got involved in stuff whenever he damn well pleased. 

When it came to the crew of Rogue One, Baze Malbus often did please.

 In the end, he surrendered the poi. Property reacquired, Jyn immediately withdrew to the riverside. 

Said riverside was a relatively open place a few clicks south from the old pyramids. If one followed the nearby creek which was their source of drinking water a ways down stream, it joined a river, just where the latter bent sharply. The river flowed east-west, and the bend meant that the near bank was flat, low and almost beach-like, covered in a mixture of big, flat stones and swathes of smaller, soft and round ones, polished and rolled by the current. At this stretch of the river, the forest opened up into a heath, dotted by groves and the occasional ravine of an especially irritating sort of thorny shrub. The dominating fauna in this area was a small, irate and mildly poisonous snake. It was a meagre and somewhat rubbery source of protein, hardly worth the effort.  
In other words, there was little of interest out here, which meant no one usually went this way. This quality was what suited her particularly about it. 

 Also, it was pretty here. If one attached importance to such things.  
  It was a place she had enjoyed escaping to, in the short time she had been part of the Alliance on Yavin IV. She knew the time on this moon was soon over, that the rebellion would have to move on, that celebration would soon again give way to battle. The Empire was wounded following the loss of the Death Star, but it was far from dead. It would want to avenge the insult. Soon this river, too, would be a memory, left behind as they all ran and fled, again.

 The thought alone made her tired beyond words.

 But at least, Galen Erso had bought them a fighting chance. And at least, she had the opportunity of spending time here, once more, before they had to take off. And she was using it.

 Still irritated with Malbus, but not entirely unmindful of the sense behind his rebukes, she threw down her bag near one of the bigger, firmer rocks at the very riverside, only a few steps from the water. Initially, she would train with the poi unlit. Yesterday's inebriation aside, she had sensed it: she'd been rusty. She needed to immerse slowly back into it.

 But she planned to stay here all day, and she'd be damned if she was going to let a good dusk go to waste without rewarding herself a bit. Wouldn't do to let herself be seen with another pair of singed trousers. He'd never shut up then.

 The next hours she worked with the poi, summoning all the discipline she could muster.  Occasionally she would hit flow, and when it happened she was rewarded with a few minutes where her mind felt blessedly empty.  But these occasions were few and far between. The inebriation of the day before was no longer there to help. She was woefully out of practice. Much more than she had initially realized. She'd been busking with fire spinning when Saw's militia had... when she had left Saw's militia. She had first learnt the basics from... was it Idryssa, while she had still been with them? Jyn couldn't remember. She couldn't remember, and it bothered her. More than it had any right to.

 In the end, she gave up trying it with the lights on. She estimated that she'd probably make a godawful mess of it.  
In stead, she risked a small bonfire. Wrapping herself up, she sat herself with her back to it, staring into the sky. The debris from the false moon was still falling, occasionally, like big glowing streaks into the moon's atmosphere.

Stardust.

 Finally, in the wee hours, she broke camp. You can't stay out here moping forever, Erso.

She packed up and started back. 

 

The base was quiet, save the sentinels posted in the crow's nests on the perimeter. Jyn took care to hail them, feeling briefly sorry on their behalf. It must be freezing up there, at this hour. 

The door to the hangar was open. She spotted the silhouette of ships in the dark, Rogue One among them, a big, comfortably sleeping animal. She stood looking at it for a moment, and realised she was smiling.  
 Then she turned left, down dimly lit hallways, the long, featureless one between hangar and the bunk rooms. A gust of wind from the outside breezed through, and a piece of the wall suddenly caved in, soundlessly. She was flat against the wall, blaster in hand, before she realized it was a door opening outwards. Apparently there was a depot here. 

She was going through the possible reasons why it was unlocked, mundane as well as suspiscious options, when a shadow moved across the wall, from around the corner. 

She recognized his gait and the outline of his shoulders before the dim night lanterns caught his face. She lowered and holstered the blaster.

He stopped and lifted an eyebrow, surprised. He looked sleepy. Hair tousled, trousers crumpled. Undershirt. No shoes. 

He was unexpected. Unexpected and terribly beautiful, and that combination was unfair.  
"What are you doing up?" she whispered urgently (why was she whispering?).

"Walking," he responded, softly but at normal speaking level.

Ever the laconic, Jyn thought.

"Well..." he started again, aiming for the depot door.

"You're  _sleeping_  in there?!"

He lowered his eyes. Studied the ground in front of his feet a moment. Then looked back up. It was like someone burned holes in her.

"Couldn't sleep."

He looked harrowed, she saw that now. She knew why. Oh, did she know how it was, being afraid of your own thoughts.

She'd gone the last few steps over before she realised it, closing most of the gap. She wanted to will him to be better again. She wanted...so much it was like an incoherent noise, threatening to drown her. 

When she realized what she was doing it was too late. She was back on the event horizon, course correction impossible. She had no idea how to escape the pull.

She hung on to the line, staying the course down the middle for dear life. 

  
***

 

 He'd looked at her, he knew, since Jedha. Looked, and been satisfied with looking. It was what he did, after all, staying out of sight, somewhere high up, looking at people walking down below. 

 Sometimes he thought she'd seen him. Then Scarif had happened, and he was almost sure, and had felt insanely lucky. But also at a loss what to do.  

 But she was here now. And they both knew. And this time she wasn't drunk.

 He decided to take the risk. Considered for a moment how to communicate it.

"You are no longer drunk," he eventually stated.

The matter-of-factness clearly caught her off guard. He couldn't blame her, he'd surprised himself there.

"No." She muttered. Then, turning her face toward his. "No. I'm not."  
It ground to a halt there.  
He regarded her. She squirmed under it, and he felt bad about that. But not looking was no longer an option, now.   
After what seemed like an eternity, she straightened, like a general on a hill. He took the final step forward. All the way up to her. She was shaking.

He wasn't sure, for that matter, that he wasn't.

"Go on then." there was a sort of subdued desperation in her voice.

 

His eyes briefly widened in surprise. 

Then he leaned in. Stopped short for a moment. Swallowed.

By the time he'd regained momentum, she met him halfway. 

***

 

 

 For a long moment they breathed into each other. 

****

 His lips were maddeningly warm. She drank him in.

 Then she crashed.  Out of control. Over him. Pushed him through the door and down, climbed onto his lap, teared at him. 

Too quick, she thought. Too quick. You're freaking him out. Stupid Jyn, stupid, stupid.

After that thought, of course, it all went nowhere fast. She flailed and couldn't find him. Couldn't lure herself out. It all mocked her. Like a door which would only open outwards. Ambivalence hit her like a Star Destroyer. He was too warm and too close and too wanted and, therefore, feared.

 She wanted this. The closeness. She wanted it very badly. At the moment, it was so strong that it overshadowed any feeling of wanting  _him._ She knew it wasn't right, but she couldn't help it. Her skin was starving.

 She'd been stuck on a desert planet with Saw's gang, once. The drive core of the ship had been bust, and they'd had to ration water and food while someone walked fifty clicks to the nearest trading station for the appropriate part, and then fifty clicks back, and then the waiting while they fixed it all.

 She'd been around twelve, and had ignored Saw's warnings to not binge when they finally got water again. She remembered the heaving, the humiliation while she threw it all back up. This was somehow terribly similar.

 Once the mood had all fallen apart, she turned inwards, curled around the shame in her gut. Both dreading and desperately wishing that he'd say something.

He didn't. But he felt warm against her back. And he didn't leave.

***

It ended up being a bit of mess.   
Of course it would end up like that. 

 She tasted sweet, fresh, coming from the outside, her face still cool to the touch, and he'd wanted to do this for a very, very long time.

And then, it was like she was suddenly in a rush. She climbed onto him and spilled into his hands, like an overwhelming present.  
But it was as if the skill they'd developed in reading each other when operating in the field - every sign, every change of body language, every subtle nod - abruptly disappeared once he had her here.   
 He'd have been fine waiting with doing this for weeks, or longer if necessary. Might have given him time to get used to the idea himself.  

Now here they were, and he went with it, like a tree bowing to an oncoming storm. She was like a strange, feral thing, at the same time ravenous and shying away. She squeezed against him, warm and breathless. Her hands were everywhere,  and yet it felt like she was somehow half way elsewhere. It made him insanely nervous.

This did not help.

 

It was like trying to play an instrument out of tune. They struggled on a bit, reaching across a distance which seemingly appeared out of nowhere, but it was like it was all gone. They gave up, disentangled. She rolled herself up, her back resting against his side. 

He felt elated that she was here, and a bit forlorn at the same time.   
That was a first.

 " Are you there?"

 

"What? Of course I am here."

He made his voice as warm and safe as he could.

"You feel. Not quite present."

She pushed her back into his side a bit firmer.

"But I am."

She pulled one of his arms across herself, embraced it, and stayed there, close and yet closed up.

Part of him wanted to laugh, but the gravity wouldn't let him go. 

He held off. Pulled one of the blankets over both of them with the free hand. It smelled of smoke, he didn't care. Leaned back and dozed off for a while. Woke up to pins and needles.  
This time, he did snicker.

"....Jyn?"

 

"Hmmm?"

"I think my foot is asleep."

 

 

**To Be Continued (I think.)**


End file.
